Copley Square Cycle 2004

1.
The past comes upon us like a runaway.
The past comes upon us like a train.
The past comes upon us like a runaway train.

Our transgressions are laid out
car after car after car after car
as the city suffers beneath sleet.

Every year from similar windows our sins
clank and clack
across the Charles River tattooed with graffiti.

Every year from similar windows our trespasses
are un-shoveled sidewalks of ice, lassitude
and carelessness.

Every year, one more window.

2.
Memories are necklaces.
Some beautiful and expensive,
some costume,
some hemp,
some a torn bedsheet
or
a leather belt.

3.
Buildings change.
Signs change.
Paths change.
People change,
reluctantly
if at all.

4.
City of bad dreams.
City of soiled sleep.
City of blood and vomit.
City of old anthems
Old anthems of insanity
played on new instruments.

5.
This is not another poem about suicide.

I could not have screamed
any louder without walking
through a high rise window.

This is not another suicide poem.

I could not have screamed
any louder without swallowing lye.

This is not another suicide poem.

I could not have screamed
any louder and yet no one
was listening.

No one was listening because
I was screaming at a
purposely deaf choir.

They still are not listening,
but that is not their failure.
It is my failure for screaming
in every direction. Every
direction excepting the
one direction where
someone was listening.

I lied. I lied three times.
This is a poem about suicide.